Just another Humanoid robot

We started off by manufacturing brackets (which we designed). These brackets served as bases to mount the Futaba 13kgcm & 7kgcm servos we were going to use . The exoskeleton was manufactured out of aluminium which proved to be too thin. We intend to use duralumin (which is more expensive) in the future. The thickness ( or rather the thinness) of the aluminium plate (1mm) proved to be a major hurdle during the machining proces. The plate was too thin to be grasped by the CNC machine. This made it difficult for us to machine. Enter innovation …we used double sided tape and taped the plate onto another piece of aluminium(6mm) making the sheet thicker and easier to machine! 🙂 This made life a lot easier for us, also inspiring us to innovate.

We basically built the biped from the scratch. Hence do not have the design limitations our competitors face. We designed the biped on Autodesk Inventor, using the same for simulation to check if the joints moved seamlessly and without restrictions. But custom made designs usually come hand in hand with a lot of flaws which we overlooked. Nevertheless, AUTODESK rules !

The journey from a few pieces of metal and servos to a fully functional biped has been an experience to say the least . The knowledge gained invaluable , the effort put in unforgetable and the end result incredible ! 🙂 Lets divide the journey into stages …

We got our inspiration from an unexpected source ...it was a man called Dr. Prahlad Vadakkepat . He’s the assistant professor for Electrical and Computer Engineering in National University of Singapore . He is the founder secretary of the Federation of International Robot-Soccer Association and is currently its general secretary. He is also an entreprenuer whose humanoids have won several international prizes . He came to BITS , Pilani for the International Conference of Emerging Mechanical Technology . He brought with him his humanoid …and lets just say …we were inspired . 🙂

Acyut is the name of the humanoid being developed by a bunch of science freaks from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science , Pilani . We’re basically maintaining this blog to keep a track of our own progress and of how we have evolved . Then why blog? you may ask ….well lets just say that once developed , this will be India’s first indegeniously developed humanoid …we figure such an achievement deserves the right amount of publicity . Suggestions , comments and help of any sort is always welcome. We believe that robotics enthusiasts around the world might just find our blog interesting . Of course the search for sponsors is always on and any information in that respect will be thouroughly appreciated . Anyway …join us as we build Acyut ,” the humanoid” . Well…this ought to be interesting . 🙂

Acyut

Acyut is the name of the biped designed by a group of students from BITS, Pilani . Acyut I is the humanoid being built by the same group. The group plans to participate in RoboGames being held at San Francisco in June this year and also in RoboCup in China in July.